


Come On Home

by anextraordinarymuse (December_Daughter)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 14:08:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6010420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/December_Daughter/pseuds/anextraordinarymuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Steggytimes Day event on tumblr. </p><p>Steve and Peggy are reunited, against all odds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come On Home

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posted from tumblr.

“Against all odds” is a phrase that Steve Rogers has never fully appreciated. He’d thought he knew what those words meant, arranged in that particular order, but he knows now that his understanding had only been surface deep. He’s never taken that phrase to heart; never felt it; never grasped how "against all odds” is really “impossible” in disguise.

Until now. Now, time is spiraling away from him in a nose dive as the years melt away: he is immobile as the world he’s come to know fractures and dissolves around him. That must be what’s happening, Steve thinks. Tony must have done one experiment too many, or he and Bruce have exploded the wrong thing, or ... something; anything.

The fabric of existence must be unraveling, because suddenly Steve finds himself staring into the living face of everything he’s lost.

“Steve?” Her voice wavers, but that beautiful lilt curls around his name just the way Steve remembers.

“Peggy.” It’s not a question, because he knows - maybe not why, or how, but he knows who.

God, does he know who: Peggy Carter, with her wide, dark eyes and full lips. Her hair lacks the prim curls or sharp waves that Steve remembers - it’s long and straight and glows faintly in the sunlight - and her lackluster clothes are clearly borrowed, but it’s undeniably her.

They aren’t alone, though the illusion is there. Coulson and May are somewhere outside the door with Tony and Pepper, and Steve can hear Pepper chastising Tony to “be respectful and don’t interrupt”. None of that has ever been there the countless times Steve's dreamed of this moment, so this must be real.

Peggy has started to cry quietly, the tears spilling over and cutting translucent tracks down the skin of her cheeks. Steve might be crying too; the future he lost a lifetime ago is not three feet from him. He can feel the pain of that loss radiating outward from Peggy, because it’s the same pain he’s lived with since he woke up in that stupid room - since he went down in that ice.

“You’re alive,” Peggy says.

“You’re here,” Steve says simultaneously.

The spell is broken. They surge forward and into one another with cosmic force, Peggy’s arms slipping around his waist as his go around her shoulders, and Steve spares a worry that they might break each other.

Peggy’s cheek is pressed into Steve’s chest, and she listens to the strong, steady patter of his heart and cries decades worth of tears into his shirt. She stays there until Steve’s arms suddenly uncoil and slide across her back so that he can lean back enough to frame her face with his hands. Peggy doesn’t care about how puffy her eyes must be, or the blossoms of splotchiness that have risen to her cheeks in her distress; she is content to stare up into wet blue eyes and recommit the lines of his face to her memory.

“It’s really you,” Steve murmurs.

“It’s really me,” Peggy affirms, because he sounds frightened.

Steve’s kiss is almost bruising in its emotion. He’s careful, so careful, but it’s the kiss of a broken man. Peggy knows, because her heart has beaten around those same fissures for far too long. She rises up onto her toes and presses into him, breathless and crying and _alive_.

Coulson interrupts their privacy not long after and does his best to answer Steve’s questions - the same ones Peggy’s been asking, Coulson tells him, and that makes Steve smile a little - but the truth is that no one knows how it is that Peggy is not only alive, but youthful once more.

Officially, Peggy Carter died two weeks ago. Unofficially, Peggy has agreed to stay under the care of Coulson’s team until they can be certain she isn’t in any danger from, well ... they don’t know what. The bottom line is that Peggy can’t stay.

“We’re heading back to base today,” Coulson informs him.

“I’m coming with you,” Steve says immediately, and though Coulson’s the director he’s looking at Peggy for approval.

They’ve let go of each other, but Peggy reaches over to curl a hand around the area just above and behind Steve’s elbow.

“I thought you might say that,” Coulson replies with a grin.

“We’ll try not to save the world without you,” Tony quips smartly. Pepper glares at him.

Steve smiles and huffs a thanks, but inwardly he acknowledges that right now he cares little for the world. Peggy is here, and he is here, and they are together once again - against all odds.

May drives and Coulson turns up the radio even as he starts telling her about some classic car that he wants to buy. If Steve had been paying attention, he might have caught the transitory twitch of May’s jaw that’s the only indication of a hidden smile.

As it is, Steve is not paying attention: he’s sitting in the back of the standard issue SUV, one hand threaded through the silken locks of Peggy’s hair as she leans against him in warm silence.

There’s so much they need to say, and do, and Steve knows that they’ll get to all of that. For now ...

For now, all that matters is that somehow, through wars and decades and obstacles untold, they can finally have a future.

* * *

 

(”You kept it,” Peggy says when she finds his compass. That little newspaper clipping of her is still inside, though she has no idea how it’s survived.

Steve nods once. “Always points home,” and his eyes flick down to her picture.

Peggy starts to laugh and Steve’s brow furrows in confusion. She motions for him to hold out his hand and sets the compass down on his palm so that it’s facing him, her expression full of joy. Steve stares at the compass - it takes him a minute to realize that the needle is pointing North, directly at Peggy and, beyond her, their bed.

“Right then,” she says primly. She squares her shoulders and holds out her arms.

“What?” Steve asks.

“Come home, Captain.”

Steve laughs and sets down the compass to sweep her up and back, into the bed, and does as he’s told.)


End file.
